First Military Nurse Laid to Rest

Accra, Jan. 11, GNA - The first Ghanaian female Military Nurse to enrol in the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), Major Mercy Afua Addo (rtd) was on Thursday laid to rest at the Military Cemetery, Osu at the age of 84. Major Addo, who was commissioned into the GAF Nursing Corps in 1957, served for 16 years.

She joined the Military after she had had her four children and found home making and house-wife a boring business.

Before joining GAF, she first trained as a nurse at the Korle-Bu Nurses Training College in 1944, proceeded overseas to acquire further nursing qualifications and obtained her State Registered Nurse (SRN) certificate from Edinburgh Group of Hospitals, Scotland in 1955. She became a certified midwife in Ghana in 1956 from St Aifeges Hospital, Greenwich, London, before joining the 37th Military Hospital as a nursing sister.

After Ghana's independence and in line with the "Ghananization Policy" of the GAF, she responded to an advert in a British newspaper and was commissioned with four other personnel, who were all men. She held several appointments while in the service including Nursing Officer in-charge Officers Wards and Families Wards at the Military Hospital, Senior Public Health Officer, and Nursing Officer Military Hospital.

She was honourably released from the service on November 1, 1973.